Dear Ex-husband,
You wanted to know why I divorced you after so long, but you really didn’t want to listen to what I had to say, nor did you own up to your faults in our marriage. The fact that you blamed everything and everyone but yourself is so indicative of how our relationship was.

I should have stayed away when you begged me to give you another chance the first time. I was young and naive, then. I thought it was great that you wanted me back, but failed to take into account how it impacted my self-esteem. The fact that you fucked another woman and left me for her before our first wedding anniversary was bad enough. The fact that your mother and best friend allowed it to happen in their house made it even worse. None of you had any respect for me. No one deserves to feel that they are not enough, especially not enough to the one person that vowed their undying love. That you had to fuck your way through two other women before begging me to come back after the slut (I definitely think she deserves that moniker because she knew we were married and that we had a baby and had tried befriending me) dumped you made it clear to me that I was your last choice.

I was ecstatic that you wanted me back, so I wasn’t right in the head at all. I took you back and tried my hardest to forgive you, which I did to a point. I never did forgive your mother, though I allowed her back into my life as well because that was the only way to not alienate you. In these actions, I felt like I was acting like a “Good wife” should.

When we found out the Slut had gotten pregnant when she was with you and had a baby less than 5 months before the birth of our son, it was a stake to the heart. I wanted to support you because you put on the guise that you’d been taken advantage of for that. I sympathized with the fact that she took that long for you to find out by paternity test because I thought you were a good dad.

Everything I did from then on I did because we had 2 kids and I was being the “good wife.” But these were things I now know I never fully recovered from. I only pushed them to the furthest recesses of my mind and put blinders on.

I’m sure you remember the period of time when I started working a lot and would come home exhausted and just want to go to sleep. What you don’t know is that I was becoming a workaholic to avoid coming home. The fact that you jumped from job to job made it easier for me because mine was steady work. During that time, we didn’t have sex very often. I blamed it on being tired (which I was, physically as well as mentally), on various aches and pains, but the truth was that I couldn’t stand the thought of you touching me. I was repulsed by bodily fluids. So many times you wanted sex that I couldn’t stand the idea, but I went through with it anyways so I could be a “Good wife.”

As our marriage progressed, your mother began taking over minutiae of running our household. She watched the kids when we were working and for that I am thankful, but it went far beyond that. You let her take over rather than taking on those responsibilities yourself. When I complained about that happening, you did nothing until I was yelling about it. I felt like I was a nag because of this. In reality, you made a conscious decision to put your mother ahead of me and ahead of the kids. Your attitude shifted towards that as well. Slowly, you began treating me less like a wife and more like a child, talking down to me, explaining things like I was not intelligent enough to understand, yet at the same time, you were so immature in your own dealings, I felt like I had to mother you. Your own mother was acting like she was your wife.

After a few years, I began to notice that things turned into a competition with you. If I had a bad day at work, yours was worse. If I was talking about something, you would interrupt me and start talking about the same thing. You mocked me when I walked slowly when window shopping by doing some exaggerated walk behind me and talking like you were disabled. Nights you came home after I did, I greeted you at the door with a hug and kiss and asked how your day was. When I came home later, you stayed firmly planted on the couch and got mad at me if I didn’t make the effort to come over to kiss you. There were times that I let you know things I wanted – usually in the romantic vein. I remember one time telling you I wish that you’d come into the kitchen and slow dance to a love song with me. Instead, I got an exaggerated waltz around the kitchen to something that was definitely not romantic. There were also times you would rage around the house at me and at the kids. You tried to control your temper for a while and that was a great time, but it didn’t last. You never got help for it. All of this made me feel not only that I was invisible, but also that you didn’t respect me and that I was not worthy of that respect or love or appreciation.

In the last two years of our marriage, you found me crying in the bathtub several times. I told you what was wrong and you would make an effort to change them for a couple days, but apparently I wasn’t worth any more effort than that. I even told you that you were treating me how you did when you started cheating and rather than deny anything was going on, you turned it around on me and accused me of cheating on you. I didn’t cheat on you, ever. I did have suspicions you were throughout the years, but I never had any proof. I never said anything because I wanted to trust you. If I said anything, I would have meant that I didn’t trust you.

My rock bottom came when I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as you, much less sleep in there. Your mom, as usual, was sleeping on our couch, despite having her own apartment and own bed, so I ended up sleeping on a spare blanket with a spare pillow on the floor of the laundry room. That night, I found my comfort in a bottle of vodka. I only took one swig from it, but I realized that night that not only was I on the verge of becoming an alcoholic because I was in so much pain, but that if you were gone, I wouldn’t miss you and I wouldn’t miss us.

I started planning on how I was going to tell you I wanted a divorce. You knew something was wrong, but rather than allowing me to tell you on my own terms and following my boundaries, you pushed. I didn’t want to say anything I would regret. Once I finally told you, you continued to disrespect my boundaries and trample over them. I remember that night you told me to take the bed because I’d had too much to drink. I woke up and you were on top of me. I realize now that was rape. Things culminated when you physically restrained me from leaving the house when I wanted to get away. You blamed your mother on our problems and, after you went to therapy, you started blaming our problems on your new found diagnosis of being bi-polar. I might have been willing to go to more therapy if you ‘d been willing to admit your faults and actually want to work on them. It didn’t help that the therapist suggested I was going through a mid-life crisis.

By the time you screamed, “Fuck you!” at me in the parking lot in front of our kids, it was over. Completely.

I met the guy I’m dating two weeks after I told you I was done. We became friends because he was going through a divorce as well. When I told you about him, I did so because I knew it was the only way I could get you to back off. I didn’t expect that you would have a revelation the next morning that you were in love with a woman you’d been talking to online for most of our marriage. For me, that was the proof I needed that you were cheating through most of our relationship. Even if it wasn’t physical, it was emotional and who knows what else.

I know she moved across the country to be with you and that you moved in together not long after our divorce was final. I also know your mother lives 3 doors down from you and spends all her time at your place. Some things never change and I’d hope my leaving would have taught you something, but apparently it didn’t.